Thursday, March 5, 2015

The big retcon

This week brings with it a end to my current OSR feel 3.5 Keep on the Borderlands game as a needed change of gaming night has forced me to lose half my players for various but valid reasons. Now down from 6 to 3 players and the previous adventure having just been completed 2 weeks prior, the remaining members are willing to take the plunge down the rabbit hole and convert their characters over from 3.5 to Swords & Wizardry.

This of course brings a few challenges. The remaining players are a 3rd level Barbarian, Rogue, and Wizard. The rogue is easy enough to switch over albeit no longer being forced to be a skill monkey by design. The wizard will lose access to a few spells but with the promise of working together on creating system appropriate variations for the campaign that can be custom to the character. The last and requiring the most change is the barbarian. S&W does not have this in the core rules but thankfully to the 2013 S&W appreciation day the Lonely GM has provided what I feel is a really good representation of the idea of the barbarian that I will be rocking and rolling in my game.

This lead to me just for fun do some additional searching and I found a variation of the bard that WILL be part of my game world one way or another thanks to the work of ZZARCHOV. Less about music or magic and more about being the teller of tales and out smarting their foes.

I will also be bringing in the Shields will be broken rule

=====================================

Shields will be brokenA player can opt to forgo damage done to them if they sacrifice their shield. Thedamage will be waived and the shield will break. For a magic shield every +1 willgive them a 1 in 6 chance of the shield surviving this trauma. A sort of “save”

=====================================

All in all even though we are losing half the party and doing a bit of retcon to characters I feel the drop back from overly crunchy rules a bigger emphasis on adventuring will be a good experience all around. The show must go on!

About Me

I have been gaming off and on for close to 17 years now mostly playing D&D 3.0/3.5 with a little pathfinder and the occasional GURPS game here and there. Since finding my calling in the OSR with Swords & Wizardry I am looking to give back to the gaming community which has brought me many years of joy.
My other hobbies include collecting and playing retro gaming systems & games (which was new when I was a kid) and ham radio.